Shiloh history steeped in church
Continued from page 1
farms.
“At least nine or 10 farms were
bought with his help in those
days,” Mrs. Dunnegan said. “You
see his name over and over again
in the transfer of deeds.”
He also helped start a farmer’s
co-operative where farmers
brought their excess crops to be
exchanged and sold, and helped
set up a grist mill for use by all of
the community. “The mule would
walk around and around and the
millstone would grind the corn,”
Mrs. Dunnegan said. There was
also a mill to grind millet to make
com syrup, which people used
instead of sugar, she said.
Dunston also served on the
“colored” school board, and was
instrumental in getting a school
in the community (through eighth
grade). He wanted to start a high
school in Shiloh, but this one
time, the landowners did not sup
port him. Mrs. Dunnegan specu
lates that they feared they would
have to bear an additional tax
burden.
Dunston’s motto to his congre
gation was, “Buy and work your
own land, stay at home, educate
your children and teach them to
work.” When he died at age 73,
he was buried on the church
grounds, the only grave ever put
there.
Even before Dunston came
along, there was a pocket of free,
landowning blacks in the area
who lived side by side with
whites, Mrs. Dunnegan said.
After the Civil War ended, in
about 1867, fifty members of
Cedar Fork Baptist Church,
which still exists in the Nelson
Community, broke off in 1867
and formed the Shiloh Baptist
Church.
Recently, Mrs. Dunnegan went
through the church records at the
Cedar Fork Church.
“The book was so fragile, I had
to wear gloves so as not to get oil
on the pages. I spent about four
hours each on two different days,
wading through the old English
and handwriting, but it was fasci
nating the things it revealed about
the life and time.”
The church in those days was
very controlling, she saicL^Recy^c _ .
had to stand before the congrega
tion and ask for forgiveness for
things such as loud behavior or
drinking.
The same thing held true of the
Shiloh Church after it was
formed, she added.
Eventually she found lists of
church members, one for men,
one for women, and one for col
ored. The colored church mem
bers were designated as “servant
of’ or as free.
‘The hardest part is
putting it in diaiogue,
recording the way
dad said it. It’s hard
to capture his nu
ances... But it's ex
citing to look at his
tory as a dialogue... ’
--Esther Dunnegan
Shiloh historian
Even though the majority of
blacks broke off in 1867, the Ce
dar Fork church continued to
have colored members until
1881, according to the church
records.
Mrs. Dunnegan has spent an
even greater amount of time
wading through census records. It
was an exciting day for her when
she found her great-great grand
father listed as a free black in a
1830 census book.
She passed by the name at first,
because it was listed as William
Mayhoe, (instead of Mayo) but
then when she saw that one of his
children was Dennis, her great
grandfather, she knew it was the
right man.
“I'd heard stories about Dennis
all my life,” she explained.
For example, Dennis wanted to
marry a slave girl named Nancy
George, who was owned by a
Captain George who lived in
Brassfield, further up what is
now Miami Boulevard, and his
white neighbors, the Mangum's,
bought her for him.
During the Civil War, when
Union soldiers came into the
Magnums’ farm, Nancy was in
the Magnums’ kitchen churning
butter. The soldiers told her,
“You don’t have to do that any
more,” and she responded, “I was
free before you came in here.”
Stories like this one populate
Mrs. Dunnegan’s book-in-
progress.
“The hardest part is putting it in
dialogue, recording the way dad
said it. It’s hard to capture his
.nuances,” she said. “But it’s ex-
^4^n^jo look at history as a dia
logue; it’s enjoyable.”
“This project is very important
to me,” she said. “Daddy is get
ting older, his memory is begin
ning to fade. After my genera
tion, who is going to be here to
tell the stories?”
For her thesis, which was pub
lished in 1988, she interviewed a
dozen octogenarians in the com
munity. Today, only two of the
group are still alive.
So far the stories are just an
eclectic mixture, each of which
could stand alone. The question
now is how to organize them-
chronologically, thematically?
There is a story about her great-
great grandmother, Zettie, who
was married to Luther Mayo, and
who spent every penny during the
first years of their marriage buy
ing land.
She went to a family Christmas
celebration and saw that all of her
relatives had new things, but she
and her husband could afford no
presents.
“But they had the land to show
for it. It shows that people made
sacrifices to get it,” Mrs. Dun
negan said.
Zettie’s family home, which
was moved to make way for the
Belk Center and is now located
behind the old Masonic lodge
along Church Street, is one of the
few original homes still standing
from those days, although it is in
disrepair and probably cannot be
restored.
Mrs. Dunnegan has an oil
painting and a photograph on her
wall of Zettie as a child in front
of the house with her father Wil
liam Henry Barbee and all of her
family members.
Mrs. Dunnegan hopes to even
tually publish Tell It Again, Pa
Pa, but she has given herself no
deadline. “I’ll work hard on it for
two or three days, and then I’ll go
two or three months and not do
anything," she admitted.
She tries to substantiate ele
ments of the stories with a voting
slip, a poll tax receipt. “It sur
prised me what I could verify,”
she said. “If they paid road taxes,
then I know they owned prop
erty,” she said.
From ration stamps found from
during the Depression, “I could
tell the kind of life they had, what
they were purchasing, what they
didn’t have to purchase because
of living on a farm.”
Mrs. Dunnegan has not spent
her whole life doing historical
research. She had her real start
prior to 1982, when she and an
other member of the community,
Delores Scott, published Shi-
lodean Memorabilia in honor of
the 115th anniversary of the
church. Besides a history of the
church, it includes a hodge podge
of recipes, old sayings and ex
pressions, birth records, games
children used to play, and herbal
cures and remedies.
After finishing that project, she
decided to do her thesis on Shi
loh, and her interest in the history
of the community has grown
from there.
She is married to Troy Dun
negan. They have two grown
sons.
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Morrisville and Preston Progress, Thursday, September 25,1997 - 3
Newlyweds’ mishap has ‘precious’ ending
Continued from page 1
vehicle, but could find no trace of
Precious.
“I had this horrible, sinking feel
ing that when the vehicle was up-
righted, we’d find Precious’
crushed body. I will never again
travel with animals who are not in
carriers,” he said.
When the Explorer was uprighted,
and Precious wasn’t there, the
dedicated cat owners felt relief, and
raised their efforts to find her. They
searched through thickets and brush
lining the road side, placed “Have a
Heart” traps at the accident site,
and rented a cheap hotel room
where they stayed for several days
while they passed out flyers,
knocked on doors, and placed ads
on radio, television and in the
newspapers.
As a kindergarten teacher at Hill-
burn Elementary, Krista’s job
wouldn’t start for a few more
months, but, eventually, they had to
proceed with the move to their new
home and Jason’s job as a leasing
agent at the newly-opened Brook
Arbor apartments in Morrisville.
Every few weeks, IGista would
make a round of phone calls to the
area where they had lost Precious,
to inquire about any possible news
of her.
Jason got a new car and a promo
tion to assistant manager, and
Xrista began her new job. Two
months had passed since the acci
dent, when they got a phone call
from a vet’s office in Edgewater,
Fla., who recognized the tattoo on
the belly of the highly advertised
cat. It had been placed there by the
veterinarian who had previously
been her health care provider.
It seems that a family who lived
two miles from the accident site
had found her in a recycling bin.
She weighed only four pounds and
was covered with ticks and fleas.
Stickers and bits of bramble were
stuck in her now-mated fur. Be
cause of this, Jason’s mother, who
traveled three hours to the vets to
retrieve her, had to take her to a
groom to have her shaved. She also
nursed her back to her previous
weight of 6 pounds, 6 ounces.
While more bad news was to fol
low the good news—Jason’s new
car was stolen the night they
learned that Precious was found—
the young couple remained opti
mistic.
They love living in North Caro
lina, and when Krista’s dad and
step mom made the long trip from
Florida to return Precious to her
and Jason’s waiting arms three
months after losing her, they felt
their little family was complete.
They hope to soon be blessed with
some youngsters of the human va
riety.
Apparently Zoey is in agreement,
for according to Jason, when the
carrier containing Precious was
placed on their living room floor,
Zoey jumped off the sofa and ran
over to her. Precious’ owners
couldn’t get her out of the carrier
fast enough for Zoey.
It seems that Zoey had pretty
much jumped through the hoops for
his Precious. He has had to resort to
some pretty dramatic attention get
ting antics of running vigorously
back and forth and doing springy
jumps. Previously the more aggres
sive cat, he has deferred this role to
Precious who is, for now at least) a
bit aloof.
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